In the Late Cretaceous period, the South Pole was covered with ice.
The study was conducted by a group of scientistsfrom the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Oregon and the University of Manitoba. Remarkably, in the South Pole region “there was more than just a single valley glacier,” explains geologist John Cottle. There were likely multiple glaciers or even a large ice sheet in the region.
The researchers studied rocks along the Transantarctic Mountains, which are adjacent to the Ross Ice Shelf. It is known as the Butcher Ridge Igneous Complex (BRIC).
Bedrock map of northern and southern Victoria Land, Antarctica. Image Credit & Copyright: Demian A. Nelson et al., Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32736-9
“I heard about these stones when I was a graduate studentabout 20 years ago. Even then they were considered very strange, ”explains the scientist. Remote, even by today's standards of Antarctic exploration, BRIC is quite unusual. The fact is that the composition and formation of rocks are not typical for nearby rock formations.
During a recent expedition, the geologist finallystudied the samples. For the study, the scientists used argon-argon geochronology to date the rock and its changes. They discovered in the stones a record of a climate process that was not thought to exist at the time.
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Cover photo: Christopher Michel from San Francisco, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons